Wolf Lake First Nation Review of Canadian Environment Protection Act (CEPA) MÉMOIRE

Transcription

1 Wolf Lake First Nation Review of Canadian Environment Protection Act (CEPA) MÉMOIRE (final version) presented to The Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna by Chief Harry St Denis 01 December 2016

2 NOTE This document is the final version of the mémoire of the Algonquin Nation of Wolf Lake adopted by the Chief and Council the 1 st of December 2016.

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS NOTE INTRODUCTION COMMUNITY PORTRAIT GENERAL COMMENTS.6 4. SPECIFIC COMMENTS.7 5. CONCLUDING REMARKS...8 3

4 1. INTRODUCTION Dear Minister McKenna and fellow Commissioners, my name is Harry St Denis. I am the Chief of the Wolf Lake First Nation (WLFN) known in Algonquin as Mahingan Sagaigan. We are grateful for the opportunity to present this memoire on improving The Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA). Before starting, and for the record I would like to address some procedural concerns about the conduct of this consultation and the perfunctory timelines suggested to present our views today. Unfortunately, this process has been marred by short notice periods, insufficient funding and timing for Aboriginal communities like our own to prepare comments. I conclude our introduction with no disrespect to your committee, however, this Federal procedure to date is ineffectual for First Nation peoples participation, unduly limiting us through funding and arbitrary timing constraints that leave little sentiment for First Nation communities to prepare or participate. In order to safeguard this situation I request that this presentation is recorded as a consultation under protest and if the federal government ultimately introduces a bill to amend the CEPA 1999, that the bill is referred back to First Nation communities like our own to be consulted upon clause by clause with appropriate resources and review timeframes to account as meaningful consultation. 4

5 2. COMMUNITY PORTRAIT Wolf Lake First Nation (WLFN), is one of ten distinct First Nations that make up the Algonquin Nation. Nine are located in Quebec and one, in Ontario. WLFN is made up of 206 members, living off reserve mostly in the areas of Lake Kipawa Quebec and in the nearby communities of Temiscaming and North Bay, Ontario. Our members continue to occupy, manage, safeguard and intensively use our territory as we carry on our traditional and family activities of visiting relatives, hunting, fishing, trapping and gathering medicinal and edible plants. We also carry out contemporary sustainable economic activities in the form of green energy initiatives, forest conservation and ecotourism businesses throughout our territory. All such initiatives are based on a model of self-determination and a history of Algonquin traditional knowledge and land governance. Since time immemorial, the Algonquin or Anishnabeg people have occupied a territory whose heartland is the Ottawa River watershed. Over four hundred years ago, we greeted Champlain when he reached the Ottawa Valley. Our lives have never been the same since. Traditionally, our social, political and economic organization was based on watersheds, which served as transportation corridors and family land management units. Today, families in the centre of seven generations transferring the knowledge and experiences of three prior generations and planning for and protecting resources for three generations into the future. Regardless of the cumulative impacts of colonization, WLFN members regard themselves as keepers of the land, carrying the seven generations worth of responsibilities regarding livelihood security, cultural identity, territorial integrity and biodiversity protection. We have accumulated local, historic and current Aboriginal traditional knowledge, customary laws and wisdom that relate to the environmental management of the lands we occupy. On January 23, 2013, our First Nation along with Kebaowek First Nation (KFN) and Timiskaming First Nation (TFN) jointly released a Statement of Asserted Rights (SAR) which summarizes the Aboriginal rights, including title, which our three First Nations assert and provides detailed evidence to substantiate it. Copies of the SAR, maps and background documentation were transmitted to the governments of Canada, Quebec and Ontario in January I ve attached for your review a map of the Algonquin Nation along with a map of our joint SAR territory as well as current and potential environmental assessment projects we are faced with on our territory. In summary, our First Nations have not relinquished Aboriginal rights and title, over lands that straddle the Ottawa River basin on both sides of the Quebec- Ontario boundary. The importance of consultation processes and the responsibilities of the Crown are affirmed by existing case law. 1 1 Haida Nation v. British Columbia (Minister of Forests) 5

6 3. GENERAL COMMENTS In carrying out the review, we understand your committee is considering matters raised in the Federal Environment Minister s Discussion Paper: CEPA Issues and Possible Approaches. Given CEPA 1999 has been described as one of the government of Canada's primary tools for achieving sustainable development and pollution prevention. 2 and the backbone of Canadian environmental legislation 3 we would like to recommend the following approach in dealing with our community. We understand the Federal government promised a renewed Nation to Nation relationship with Canada s Indigenous communities. In May 2016, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett announced at the UN that Canada was officially removing its objector status to the declaration yet the same government later in July guided Justice Minister Jody Wilson Raybould to contradict Canada s position at UN to the Assembly of First Nations. Here she explained to us that the prospect of actually implementing UNDRIP into law was a simplistic approach that was unworkable and a political distraction. This is the difference between a government seriously committed to repairing past wrongs and improving the lives of Indigenous peoples in this country and a government just pretending to do so. The UN Declaration includes a number of articles that recognize the need for a dominant state to respect and promote the rights of its Aboriginal peoples as affirmed in treaties and agreements, including how Aboriginals participate in decision-making processes that affect their traditional lands and livelihoods (UNDRIP, 2007). The concept of free, prior, and informed consent promoted by the United Nations is of paramount importance in terms of decisionmaking. For example, article 18 mentions that, Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights, through representatives chosen by themselves in accordance with their own procedure, as well as to maintain and develop their own indigenous decision-making institutions. (p. 6) Moreover, article 32 (2) of the UN Declaration states: States shall consult and cooperate in good faith with the indigenous peoples concerned through their own representative institutions in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands or territories and other resources, particularly in connection with 2 Government of Canada, CEPA 1999: Focus on Issues, 3 Dr. Kapil Khatter (Director, Health and Environment, Pollution Watch), Evidence, 10 May

7 the development, utilization or exploitation of mineral, water and other resources. (p. 9) In terms of seriously improving Canadian Environmental Protection Act practices and approaches within Canada and further linking these to international agreements, we would like to bring to your committee s attention a landmark verdict in 2015 where judges of Den Haag (The Hague) District Court ruled that the government of the Netherlands had a legal obligation to act in the best interests of current and future generations by lowering its CO2 emissions. For the first time, a court had established a duty of care towards future citizens in matters of climate policy. 4 Also a groundbreaking judgment in Seattle USA last fall ruled that the State of Washington had a constitutional obligation and public trust duty to preserve, protect, and enhance air quality for current and future generations. 5 The rise and success of these International environmental actions that support Anishnabe seven generation customary law have been exciting developments in the international legal landscape. Such litigation challenges short-term Canadian political thinking with legal action that focuses on the long-term consequences of poor policy and legislative decisions. 4. SPECIFIC CONCERNS AND ISSUES For over 7000 years the lands and waterways have provided the Algonquin people their livelihood -food, energy and materials, landscapes, spiritual grounds, economic trade and peace. The distinctive feature of our society over this period was that we did not mismanage our resources. We understood the environment supported our well-being. The past 300 years we have witnessed our environment suffer the negative impacts under an exploitive resource development and subsequently serious threat. Much of our traditional territory and livelihoods have been significantly degraded and many ecosystems have permanent or severe damage. We can no longer drink out of the Ottawa River. Agricultural farms using fertilizers and pulp and paper mill toxic compounds pose serious human, animal and fish health risks through long-term exposure and bioaccumulation along the food chain. All the while our people suffer disproportionate poverty. We would like to see polluters pay our community as environmental stewards on our own territories carrying out environmental monitoring and regulation. Today after many years of our community not being able to affect the impacts of non-algonquin management and suffering the consequences we 4 Megan Darby, Around the World in 5 Climate Change Lawsuits, Climate Home, September 7, 2015, climatechangenews.com/2015/07/08/around-the-world-in-5-climate-change-lawsuits/. 5 BREAKING: Judge Protects Right to Stable Climate in Groundbreaking Decision in Washington Case! press release, Our Children s Trust, November 19, 2015, 7

8 are here and prepared to positively contribute to change in environmental air, land and water regulation and management on our territories. WLFN is developing new management models for our territory. We understand our traditional values are fundamental to formulating responses to climate change, environmental stewardship and current legislative planning. We do not believe the current environmental laws and regulations are working on our territories. We do not believe industries should be self-monitoring with the potential for releasing new stressors into the environment. CEPA needs to update its chemical management plan so that regulations are not based on individual chemicals but the combinations of these chemicals as their combinations become more difficult to predict in our environment. Also we insist on being involved in the regulation of new chemical products entering our territories and demand free, prior, infirmed consent on their entry. This specifically applies to the toxic soup of chemicals diluting tar sand bitumen that is proposed to run through our territory in the Energy East pipeline project. For several years, Wolf Lake First Nation (WLFN) has been evaluating longterm environmental restorative actions and economic alternatives to intensive resource extraction industries that would: -Return the quality and biodiversity of the territory as WLFN knew it before impact/contact; -provide alternative employment to our growing population (few young people can find employment in the essentially declining traditional commercial forestry industry); -create economic opportunities that are compatible with the cultural values and aspirations of our members. To date, we have been actively advocating our participation in climate change regulatory activities with the Province of Quebec under its own regulatory regime. However, they do not include us in this new marketplace. We are concerned these emission standards and protocols are being adopted and traded by governments without meaningful consultation with our peoples while we continue to bear the burden of effects of pollutants and climate change on our territory without any benefits. 5. CONCLUDING REMARKS As you are aware there is much to consider with regard to reworking this backbone of environmental legislation faced with today s environmental challenges of resource development and climate change. Our message is Canada must invest in and support highly skilled Indigenous peoples on our territories to integrate our laws and knowledge with the results of science into the next version of CEPA. We look forward to our meaningful participation and further consultation in CEPA s development. 8

9 9